Paul Auster: An experimental author of ‘The New York Trilogy’

Acclaimed American author Paul Auster, who wrote the New York Trilogy mystery novels, has died at the age of 77.

He died at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday due to complications from lung cancer, said his friend and fellow author Jacki Lyden, reports BBC.

Paul Auster’s wife, author Siri Hustvedt, in March 2023 announced Auster had been diagnosed with cancer.

Auster had a long career not only as a celebrated novelist but also as an essayist, translator, screenwriter, and poet. His work was published in more than 40 languages.

Auster, who wrote more than 30 books across his career, gained cult status in the 1980s and 90s.

His novels were particularly successful in Europe and were often existentialist stories about outsiders.

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1947, Auster, the son of Jewish Polish immigrants, grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and later moved to New York to attend Columbia University.

He spent four years in France after graduating. He honed his craft as a writer in France.

His father’s sudden death prompted Auster to write 1982’s The Invention of Solitude, a haunting reflection on father-son relationships.

His breakthrough came with The New York Trilogy centred on a shady quartet of private investigators named Blue, Brown, Black, and White.

His subsequent novels involved Timbuktu and existential capers Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, and Leviathan.

He wrote the screenplay for 1995’s Smoke, starring Harvey Keitel, which won the writer an Independent Spirit Award.

Auster 2017 published the 866-page novel 4321. The novel charted US society through the life of an everyman.